Sorcery rears its ugly head again

A MAN is recovering at the Mount Hagen General Hospital after his son was burnt to death on Sunday in the Western Highlands Province after they were accused of practising sorcery. Mount Hagen police station commander Peter Rowari said police were able to save the elderly man but they were unable to do anything for the son whose body was taken to the hospital morgue.

Mr Rowari termed the incident as “very brutal, savage and primitive” and must be condemned in the strongest terms. He said the whole community seemed to have passed judgment on the family and sentenced them to death by burning the son and attempting to kill the father who was eventually saved by the police.

He said terms like “jungle justice” were used by movie directors in movies in today’s digital world but this was happening for real in Western Highlands Province.The PSC said the elderly man, Plak Dowa, was alleged to have killed Pora Kunjil by sorcery.The son who was burnt to death was an adult, identified as Anis Plak. He said this is the third recent incident related to sorcery in the Mount Hagen Central area and the whole of Western Highlands Province.

The first incident happened at Togoba where a Chimbu woman married to a Western Highlands man was set alight and the second was the recent burning of a young woman last month at the Kerabug rubbish dump outside the Highlands city. Meanwhile, he said police were investigating the latest incident and hope to make some arrests soon.

By ROBERT PALME of the Post Courier

(Above: An artistic expression of an old man have magicial powers)

*** Sorcery, sometimes known as magic, is a conceptual system that asserts human ability to control or predict the natural world (including events, objects, people, and physical phenomena) through mystical, paranormal or supernatural means. The term can also refer to the practices employed by a person asserting this ability, and to beliefs that explain various events and phenomena in such terms.

In Papua New Guinea cultures, the concept of magic is under pressure from, and in competition with, scientific and religious conceptual systems. In most cases, there are imminent assumptions of people that certain groups of people within the community practise sorcery. They have not used any method to prove whether or not their claims against these particular groups of people were accurate. When I was in Mount Hagen last year, my first warning from my family was not to eat something in front of certain people (named).

I was further warned not to go to their house or have a chat with them. They further stressed that, these people have a supernatural spirit that sucks my blood from the heart and as a result I would die the next couple of days or hours. This frightening news really saddens me because my home was the only safe people were I use to enjoy some 27 years ago. Now, the whole village is leaving in fear of these people because they believe that these people can go to the cemeteries to eat the corpse of recently dead people. This news is hershey in some parts of PNG and especially up in the highlands but for some, it is reality. During my short stint at home, I met couple of these folks but didn't see anything indifferent.

I think, it is proper for communities in PNG who suspect odd behavior from some of their fellow members to confront these issues head on. One of the problems that I saw was, not one single person came out and confessed that he/she does have the magical powers and eat the corpse or human heart and this leaves a dark area for others in the community to have the pointing fingers and naming each other games.

You never know, that some of these people who got burnt and chopped to death may not have had the magical powers. Now that the situation is becoming a concern to most people (myself included), relevant authorities should intervene to combat this situation. For now, I just hope for the best at my home like the other highlands kids.